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Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Liberals master spin-doctor on economy-related issues, John McCallum, is at it again. Yesterday I gave an example of how the old fox was not being on the level with his Bay Street buddies when he gave his assurance that “…the stability of our financial system and of our economy will be uppermost in our mind,” but omitted to mention the NDP election promise of a massive—“$47 billion over five years”—job-killing corporate tax increases.

Today I saw McCallum on CTV NewsNet telling Canadians that we are the only major economy that has not implemented a significant stimulus package.

Excuse me old fellow, the United States has launched a “rescue” package for its crumbling financial institutions. Not a “stimulus” package. Canada’s financial infrastructure is not currently in crisis and the appropriate steps to ensure liquidity there have already been taken.

A U.S. “stimulus” package won’t come until after Barack Obama takes office on January 20. And their lawmakers have recently delayed action to rescue the Big Three automobile companies.

Germany, with the largest economy in Europe, appears reluctant to implement a spending splurge after years devoted to bringing—as Canada has—its public finances back into balance.

Tell the big lie then repeat it over and over until enough people begin to believe it.

Moreover, many economists believe a lot of the figures being announced in world capitals involve a mixture of new money and recycling of existing commitments.

But, of course, McCallum knows all that—he’s an economist—so he is obviously being intentionally disingenuous.

Canadians should brace themselves for more of this kind of half-truth and hyperbole from the Grits, Paul Martin made them famous for it when he ran two federal elections using this shameful technique. You know, tell the big lie then repeat it over and over until enough people begin to believe it—with the help of a supporting cast of friendly MSM journalists, of course.

Here’s the latest chapter in the continuing saga of political brinkmanship being played out in our capital: CTV News web site reports this morning that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will table the Tory government’s fiscal year 2009/10 budget on January 27.

We are going to freeze the [political party] contribution level, the subsidy level on that, but we will not seek to eliminate it, because the number one issue is the economy.

– Jim Flaherty

It remains far from certain whether the opposition will be satisfied with this timing and will back away from threats to defeat the government on its fiscal update.

In his statement to CTV’s Question Period this morning, Flaherty defended his government’s level of economic stimulus put forward so far; however, the opposition doesn’t seem to be buying it.

Liberal MP Michael Ignatieff said Flaherty did little to persuade opposition members to back away from forming a Bloc-backed coalition with the NDP in an attempt to defeat the government when the fiscal update comes to a vote on December 8.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Tories back down: Stephen Harper’s Conservatives will back away from their proposal to slash public funding for political parties and offer a hastily patched together stimulus package to give the opposition a face-saving way out of this messy nonsense.

I don’t think it’s worth going into an election over this political subsidy.

– John Baird, Transport Minister

The immediate crisis seems to have passed, but let there be no doubt: there are no angels here. The events of the last couple of days represent a major political miscalculation of the sort Canadians cannot afford at any time, but most particularly at this time in our history when the world faces its toughest economic challenge in over 75 years.

Because of this Tory miscalculation, Stéphane Dion and the opposition seems to have found some backbone. The genie is out of the bottle and won’t be put back in. The opposition now is prepared to sacrifice themselves rather than be slammed around and have their noses rubbed in the dirt. And there’s probably someone in the PMO who should be given a “pink slip” because of this.

Let’s hope the Ottawa boys and girls stop their silly games and get back to work.

Markham—Unionville) was rushed before news cameras to try and reassure his Bay Street buddies that the potential change in government was not as scary a prospect as he knew they believed. McCallum said:

I understand that the global economy, the Canadian economy is fragile, so I want the business community, the financial community to know that should we form the government, that the stability of our financial system and of our economy will be uppermost in our mind ….

This might very well be true as far as it goes, but what the old Bay Street fox didn’t talk about is precisely what was scaring the heck out of his banking pals: corporate taxes.

A few days before the Leadership debate during the last federal election, NDP Leader Jack Layton said that an NDP government would reverse corporate tax cuts brought in by Liberal and Conservative governments, saying the move would bring in some $47 billion over five years.

Don't tell me that banks and oil companies, which by the way, made 42 per cent of the profit of corporations in Canada last year, need help. The families of this country need help, Layton said.

Yes, the same corporate taxes socialist leader Jack Layton promised to hike if he got the chance.

Well, guess what, folks, if John McCallum and his Liberal party form a government it be at the pleasure of Layton’s NDP.

And the last time a Liberal government—under Paul Martin—bought the support of the socialists, it paid for it with a promise not to reduce corporate tax as it had proposed to do in its recently tabled budget.

I wonder how McCallum reconciles his assurance that “…the stability of our financial system and of our economy will be uppermost in our mind,” with massive—“$47 billion over five years”—job-killing corporate tax increases?

Remember? McCallum’s boss, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion called Jack’s idea a “job killer” only a few week ago, when he asked:

The very moment you raise $50 billion in increasing the burden on our companies, on employers that are creating jobs, how many people will lose their jobs, how many families will lose their earnings?

Man, those old Grits could spin a silk purse out of cat gut, couldn’t they? God save Canada.

If it really were true that the Liberals want to pull the plug on the Conservative government because of a lack of immediate stimulus package, how come the federal Liberals are not screaming for multi-billion dollar packages from their Ontario and Quebec provincial counterparts?

Much more believable is the majority view that the Grits are scared to death of loosing a big chunk of their taxpayer-funded $1.95 per vote handout.

And so they should since their followers don’t care enough to fund their tired, corrupt leaderless party.

Only crass political opportunism would lead party leaders to demand an expensive economic stimulus package at this time. In the recent past, the Prime Minister’s party has cut business taxes; accelerated construction of roads bridges and other infrastructure projects; injected billions of dollars of liquidity into Canada’s credit markets; and proposed federal government expense control measures to try to balance the federal budget for 2008/9 and beyond.

These measures come hard on the heels of other measures to stimulate consumer spending, such as the cut to the GST, and they preface promises by the Prime Minister to do more if it becomes necessary.

Does any sane Canadian who isn’t blinded by Liberal/NDP ideology, propaganda or hyperbole really believe a Tory government will not do everything it can to help the Canadian economy? I don’t think so.

The shaky state of the Big Three American-owned automobile companies makes any attempt to bail out their Canadian subsidiaries futile. If the Big Three fail in the United States, they will fail in Canada, despite any unilateral action that our federal government might take. Once the details of the anticipated U.S. bailout of the American parent companies is known, our government can take appropriate action.

Canada’s economy is about one tenth that of the United States, and our prosperity is far more dependent on what happens in that country than it is on any stimulus package our federal government would be able to assemble.

Furthermore, President-elect Barack Obama is reported to be crafting a stimulus package amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. With this in mind, should our government be unilaterally shoveling dollars out the door without the benefit of knowing details of that package, which probably won’t be known until Obama takes office in late January? Of course not, that would be irresponsible. And for the opposition to claim otherwise is a measure of their intellectual dishonesty—and, I suspect, ineptness.

Canada’s economy and financial infrastructure have been, for the most part, prudently managed by Tory and Liberal governments for the past 25 years, and that good work is now paying off for all Canadians. In this regard, we are the envy of the western world.

But because the Conservatives want to end some of the federal handouts to political parties, the grasping Liberals and NDP will trump up a case for an immediate multi-billion-dollar stimulus package and use it as an excuse to defeat the newly elected government.

If the opposition gets their way:

Canada would have a prime minister whose party voters rejected only a few weeks ago and who himself was rejected as leader by that party;

the NDP, which in 80 years of trying has never come close to having enough seats to form even a minority government will hold vital positions in cabinet; and

the party founded to engineer the break up of Canada will hold the balance of power.

What a wonderful prospect.

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

– Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

And all why? Because, after helping to fund our own party, Tories are tired of being forced to help fund the opposition as well, including one party that wants to break up our country. We Tories are helping to fund Stéphane Dion so he can sit in a nationally televised leaders debate and repeatedly call our leader a liar.

Unbelievable! Doesn’t this sound like something out of Alice in Wonderland?

But this is what happens when pompous, grasping little men are chosen to lead political parties that are incapable of convincing their followers that their ideas and proposed policies are worth their financial support. There’s not a real statesman among them. God help Canada.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Liberal party insiders who support Michael Ignatieff will undoubtedly use the current party-in-crisis atmosphere to dump Stéphane Dion and install Ignatieff as leader without benefit of a full leadership convention, leaving poor old Bob Rae out in the cold

When powerful dynasties become old and corrupt, the traditional way to change leaders is by coup d’état, not election. And the Liberal Party of Canada is nothing if not a tired old corrupt political dynasty.

Apparently, neither Jack Layton nor secessionist Gilles Duceppe will support a Liberal-NDP coalition with Dion at the helm. So what will the power-hungry Grits do? Well, dump Stéphane, of course. Such a golden opportunity to be rid of looser Dion and grab the rains himself must be next to irresistible for Iggy, eh?

I don’t think the Tory government will fall next week, but Dion’s days as leader may well end before Christmas. With him as leader, it reduces maneuvering room for the Grits, and Iggy’s too bright not to see this.

The Tories have apparently backed down on their threat to include the cut to political party subsidies in the confidence vote on their fiscal update set for Monday. The opposition, nevertheless, seem as determined as ever to bring down the government.

Or are they? Now that their handouts are safe, do they really have the stomach to go back to the polls so soon?

Here we have the situation where any other Group of Seven government would gladly trade positions with Canada’s financial infrastructure, and yet our opposition parties want to defeat our freshly mandated government.

By acting when prospects were brighter, we avoided a situation where we would have been compelled to take panicked and undisciplined measures when times were tougher.

– Finance Minister Jim Flaherty

While the United States and others around the world have had to inject trillions to shore up their banks and economies, Canada has been able to avoid costly bailouts. True, the Bank of Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation have both pitched in and taken mortgages from the banks in exchange for cash, but, so far, this has not been at a cost to taxpayers.

Indeed, Canada is the only member of the G7 still recording surpluses. This is a remarkable record, much of the credit for which belongs to the Jean Chrétien/Paul Martin Liberal governments. They laid the groundwork that has provided Canada’s robustness in the face of this economic downturn.

And the Stephen Harper government is demonstrating that even in the face of wide-spread panic, they will remain calm and resist shrill calls from the opposition to throw open the govenrment’s vaults and shovel taxpayer money out the door. The United States is doing that, but their banking infrastructure has collapsed, ours has not.

I think the fiscal update will pass the vote of confidence next week. It makes good economic sense that it does.

Ah, entitlements, the Liberals and the socialists do love them so—not to mention the Bloc who preach secession and an end to Canada as we know it. Now that the scandalous “Sponsorship” windfall/boondoggle is no longer available, the corrupt Liberal party has become so dependent on the taxpayer-funded $1.95 per vote handouts, they’re prepared to climb into bed with Quebec separatists to keep their entitlements.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

As soon as there is talk of ending some of their unearned handouts, all opposition parties threaten to bring down the democratically elected government under a thin veil of duplicity in the form of claims that it’s the lack of stimulus package that upsets them so.

Oh joy! Mean old Stephen Harper wants to take away the opposition’s government hand-out, so they plan vote his party out and install a coalition of Canadians’ second, third and fourth choices to run the country.

As prime minister, we’ll have Stéphane Dion whose Green Shift platform was resoundingly rejected only a few weeks ago, and whose leadership was rejected by his own party. Supporting him will be Michael Ignatieff, whose love for Canada was so strong he spent most of the past 30 years living in another country, and Bob Rae whose last time in government was an unmitigated failure, leaving the province of Ontario virtually bankrupt.

But not to worry, the coalition will bring in that pompous socialist self-promoter Jack Layton whose NDP party has been rejected by Canadians for decades, leaving them without so much as a sniff of power federally since they were formed as the CCF party about 80 years ago. And supporting Layton is Gilles Duceppe—you know, Duceppe, he’s leader of the party that wants to tear Canada apart. I wonder what ministry they have in mind for him?

Here’s your lineup:

Dion as prime minister

Layton as finance minister

Duceppe as minister of culture and inter-provincial affairs

Ignatieff will head up foreign affairs

Bob Rae will head up a new portfolio: budgeting and strategic planning.

And maybe they’ll appoint Elizabeth May to the Senate—she’ll never get into parliament any other way—and make her minister of the environment.

The prospect would be hilarious, if only the future of our country was not at stake.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Today at 4:00 p.m. in Ottawa, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled a fiscal and economic update for the 2008/9 fiscal year. No guarantees are promised, but here is a quick overview of the government’s plans:

No stimulus package at this time.

No deficit this fiscal year and five balanced budget over the next five years.

Some relief planned for seniors and pension funds.

Capped salary increases for civil service—annual 2.3 percent for 2008/9, and 1.5 per cent in following three years.

Cuts to government departments’ and agencies’ travel and consulting and sale of assets—$15 billion expected to be saved over five years.

Cut government per vote subsidy to political parties April 1, 2009.

More stimulus may be required in the future, and it may push budget into deficit.

A good small “c” conservative approach in these uncertain times.

According to CTV Newsnet, Liberals and NDP will not support the update (in its current form) so we could see the government fall before Christmas. And rumours are circulating that discussions are underway that would see the opposition trying to form a government should the Conservatives fall.

Support for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) is snowballing. Those in favour range from the liberal Toronto Star to the conservative National Post and liberal Globe and Mail to the conservative Toronto Sun, and several other media organizations across the country. (Ezra Levant, the free-speech advocate, has a more extensive list of supporters here.)

The use of censorship by the government should be confined to a narrow category of extreme expression—that which threatens, advocates or justifies violence against the members of an identifiable group, even if the violence that is supported or threatened is not imminent.

– Richard Moon

Yesterday, veteran newspaperman and one of the founders of Toronto Sun, Peter Worthington, added his call to “End threat to free speech.”

Then there is the grass roots of the Conservative Party, who recently made this official party policy, and Liberal MP Keith Martin who has made a couple of private member’s motions on the subject. And, of course, we have law professor Richard Moon’s report recommending that Section 13 be repealed. So wide support is there.

But so what? Without government action, all we have is a bunch of fine-sounding words. And, frankly, I don’t see government action anywhere on the horizon.

Tinkering with human rights legislation is like tinkering with arts funding, and we all know where that got us.

The very Liberals who support, in private, the repeal of Section 13 will be among the first to “spin” government action in a negative way, if they see a chance to pick up votes in, say, the Jewish and Muslim communities, where support for keeping Section 13 intact is strongest.

And as for the NDP: they are so dedicated to political correctness, and pandering to minorities to get their votes that they'll not likely support removing hate speech from under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Commission notwithstanding that it’s the right thing to do.

Not everyone cares about free speech, at least, not enough to upset the apple cart that is political power. Repealing Section 13 may well turn out to be small change in a high-stakes poker game.

But, you know, even the staunchest conservative voter may well decide not to continue to vote for a party that deliberately ducks sticking up for traditional conservative values like the protection of free expression.

The lineup at the public trough will be getting shorter if the Tory government has its way and cuts the more than $26 million a year of public financing that goes to support federal parties. Federal political parties receive a public subsidy of $1.75 per year for each vote they receive in a general election. (Update: this hand-out increased to $1.95 in Oct. 2008.)

During an economic crisis, Stephen Harper is more focused on putting the boots to his political adversaries than helping vulnerable Canadians protect their jobs and savings with a real economic plan.

– Liberal MP Scott Brison

The Conservative’s proposal will be presented today (Thursday) at 4:00 p.m. in the House of Commons as part of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s economic update.

The Tory party, which has to play under the very same rules as the other federal parties, believes it can do without the subsidy, so why can’t the others? Well apparently, the other parties rely heavily on government subsidies and bank loans to finance their party activities instead of implementing a sophisticated grass-roots-based fundraising system, such as the Tories have done.

Tory fundraising is said to raise as much as $20 million a year. They are reported to be the only party to finish the recent general election in the black.

For decades, the other parties have charged that the Tories are the party of big business and are beholden to the sector because of its influence in the party. But apparently these were empty, false claims. The Liberals and NDP are, of course, the ones who traditionally depended on corporations, unions and other large organizations for their financial support in contrast to Tory grass root support.

As to the Bloc and the Greens? Those pathetic excuses for political movements are, well, just pathetic and will have to be dragged kicking and screaming from the public trough. Boo, hoo.

Reports on Wednesday claiming that federal authorities in Washington have informed officials in New York City of a possible Al-Qaeda plot to attack that city’s transportation systems, take on more ominous overtones when news of terrorists attacks in Mumbai, India reached us yesterday.

… an intelligence bulletin sent on Tuesday to city officials said that the F.B.I. had received ‘uncorroborated but plausible information’ that, in late September, Al Qaeda terrorists may have discussed attacks on transit systems in the metropolitan area, including the city’s subway system, a federal official said on Wednesday.

– The New York Times

In pre-9/11 times, such reports would have been shrugged of as “publicity seeking” on the part of the F.B.I. We know better now, of course. Attacks in New York City, Washington, London, Spain and Bali, to name only a few, have heightened our sense of vulnerability.

Then yesterday we got news from Mumbai that terrorists had attacked several targets there—including two hotels and a hospital—and had taken hostages.

More that 20 hours after the attack, there were 125 dead and 327 wounded, and according to UK officials, hostages are still being held at Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels. Among the dead was Hemant Karkare, the chief of the Mumbai police’s anti-terror squad, and 14 police officers.

Reports claim westerners were singled out during some of these attacks.

No where in the world is safe from these savage attacks on civilians. There is indeed a global war being waged by terrorist and more often than not westerners are targets.

Monday, November 24, 2008

In what may turn out to be merely a case of wishful thinking, The Canadian Press reports that former prime minister Paul Martin is confident the Grits will void the disunity caused by recent Liberal leadership rivalries.

Past rifts in the party such as the one caused by the acrimony between Mr. Martin and former prime minister Jean Chrétien have only recently healed somewhat. Now Liberals want to avoid the kind of nasty in-fighting they saw during the 2006 leadership campaign in which current leader Stéphane Dion emerged as a compromise winner.

Sparring between Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae went public last week and threatens to divide the party even after next May when one of them will likely emerge as the replacement for Dion.

The religious vote may be helping the Tories. According to a poll Angus Reid Strategies did for Maclean’s, Roman Catholics are voting for the Conservatives in increasing numbers. Roman Catholics reportedly make up 44 per cent of the population and have tended to vote for the Grits; however, in 2006, RCs began a move to the Tories.

“Outside Quebec, 49 per cent of Catholics who attend church weekly voted Conservative, compared to just 38 per cent in 2004. Within Quebec, where upwards of 80 per cent of the population identifies as Catholic, the switch away from the Liberals is even more striking. In 2008, just 22 per cent of Quebec Catholics voted Liberal, compared to 56 per cent in 2004.” – Angus Reid Strategies/Maclean’s

And apparently it isn’t just Roman Catholics. Protestants—30 per cent of the population—who have tended to vote pretty much evenly for the two major parties, have started to lean toward the Tories over the past four years.

In 2008, 64 per cent of church-going Protestants outside of Quebec voted Conservative—51 per cent in 2004. And apparently Tory support among voters from the conservative/fundamentalist Christian faiths is even stronger.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) today released the “Report Concerning Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Regulation of Hate Speech on the Internet,” which recommends that Section 13, the “hate speech” provision in the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), should be repealed.

“The use of censorship by the government should be confined to a narrow category of extreme expression—that which threatens, advocates or justifies violence against the members of an identifiable group, even if the violence that is supported or threatened is not imminent.” – Richard Moon

The report, which was commissioned by the CHRC in June 2008, was prepared by law professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor.

Section 13 of the CHRA was initially written because of telephone hate lines, but was expanded in 2001 to include the Internet and other forms of media. It prohibits messages that are likely to expose an identifiable group to hatred or contempt.

Prof. Moon writes:

The first recommendation is that section 13 of the CHRA be repealed, so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) no longer deal with hate speech, and in particular hate speech on the Internet. Hate speech should continue to be prohibited under the Criminal Code

This is about the best outcome we could have hoped for and Prof. Moon should be commended. The repeal of Section 13 has also been proposed by Liberal MP Keith Martin and by the Conservative Party at its recent policy convention.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Seldom does a day go by that I don’t see something disturbing about the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) that justifies a public inquiry into that organization.

“Both Mark and I were spooked by our experience at the CHRC. It was unlike any other government office we have ever seen. Talk about ‘faceless bureaucracy!’ It is absolutely frightening that these people, who spend their days hidden behind a security guard and bulletproof glass, have the power to utterly destroy the lives of Canadians, and they don't even have to look their victims in the eyes.” – Free Dominion

This group was set up originally to deal expeditiously with cases of discrimination in the workplace and housing. A worthy objective no doubt. But now, with “hate speech” added to their mandate, they seem to be operating in a fashion more familiar to those who lived behind the Iron Curtain than one would expect of a government agency in an open western society.

The most recent case in point is outlined at Ezra Lavant’s blog. Mr. Levant tells us about the rather bizarre experiences folks from Free Dominion had when they visited the CHRC’s offices at Ottawa. Recommended reading for all.

You couln’t make this stuff up, and, if it wasn’t such a serious subject, you’d have a good laugh.

Liberal MP Keith Martin introduced new private members’ motions to replace and expand on the one that did not get voted on in the last session of parliament. Mr. Martin represents British Columbia’s federal riding, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca

That, in the opinion of the House, subsection 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act should be deleted from the Act.

M-153 is a direct replacement for his previous motion that died with the last session of parliament. This time, however, with M-156 Mr. Martin goes further by calling for a public review of the human rights act and the commission that administers it. M-156 states:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should hold public hearings as part of a review of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its tribunal.

These motions along with the Conservative Party’s grass roots voting recently to curtail use of Section 13 (1) of the CHRA as a way to control free expression in Canada, the pressure is mounting on the government to act.

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